Electronics Store Comet Sold for £2
 |
November 10, 2011 TheFreshOutlook  |
Comet’s 248 stores, along with all of their stock, were sold for just £2 yesterday to private equity firm OpCapita.
Electronic retailer Comet has been sold for a base price of just £2 to private equity firm OpCapita after suffering in the current economic crisis.
The sale comes after Comet lost £9m last year, becoming a high risk business to its parent company Kesa.
Anglo-French retailer Kesa, who make most of their money from European electrical retailer Darty, sought to sell Comet as soon as possible, offering a ‘dowry’ of £50m to OpCapita to take the chain off of their hands.
As well as providing the dowry, Kesa will remain responsible for the pension scheme of Comet employees, which holds a current deficit of £39.3m.
OpCapita paid a nominal sum of £1 for the Comet chain, and another £1 for Tripych Insurance, who provide warranties for Comet’s electrical goods.
Henry Jackson, who runs OpCapita with former Halford’s boss David Hamid, is positive that they can revive the struggling electrical store.
“Comet’s a big business, it’s underperformed but it has a lot of potential. People like the brand and the stores are reasonably located,” he said. “This is what we do – we go into these underperforming situations and we run them better. Of course I’m concerned about the economy, but I’m positive about the opportunities to run the business better.”
The sale of Comet comes days after rival, Best Buys Europe, announced the closure of 11 of its superstores. Dixon also announced the closure of 200 of its outlets last week.
Mr Jackson believes that this will help Comet’s situation further, but stated that even with this added help, the consumer economy is to remain “tough for a while”.
Kesa now hopes that the company will itself find revival. Kesa’s biggest shareholder, Knight Vinke added: “This transaction substantially de-risks Kesa and opens the way for Darty … to return to the French stock market.”
OpCapita do not hold any plans for redundancies to be made in the meantime.
By Chloe Nicholas
[Image courtesy of utnapistim]
